Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to be “neutral” in politics

Zuckerberg said that, unlike the last presidential election, he does not plan to donate to support election infrastructure in 2024. In 2020, he and his wife donated $400 million to nonpartisan organizations that help organize elections during the pandemic. Republicans labeled them “Zuckerbucks” and claimed they were useful to Democrats in the election.

“They were designed to be non-partisan – spread across urban, rural and suburban communities. However, despite the analysis I have seen to the contrary, I know that some people believe that this activity has benefited one side at the expense of the other,” he wrote. .

While the donations have long been controversial, a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May found that private donations like Zuckerberg’s did not benefit Democrats.

In the letter, Zuckerberg also addressed the moderation of Meta’s content, an issue Jordan and other Republicans have been highly critical of, accusing the social media platform of censoring conservative views.

Zuckerberg said that in 2021 the Biden administration repeatedly pressured Meta to remove content related to COVID-19 and “expressed a lot of frustration” when the company disagreed.

Internal meta-emails obtained by Jurnal last year showed that the company removed content related to COVID-19 after pressure from the White House.

“Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to remove content, and we own our decisions, including the COVID-19 changes we made to our enforcement in response to this pressure,” Zuckerberg wrote, adding: ” I think the Government Pressure was wrong and I regret not being more honest about it.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

In 2023, Jordan threatened to hold Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress for not providing documents related to censorship of conservative views.

Zuckerberg also acknowledged that in 2020, Meta suppressed a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop while he waited for fact-checkers to investigate, adding, “In hindsight, we shouldn’t have downgraded the story.” .

He said the company has changed its processes to prevent this from happening again, such as no longer demoting stories while awaiting a fact-check.

Zuckerberg previously said Meta was wrong to suppress the laptop story.

Meta declined to comment when contacted by BI.